Unity reveals plans to charge developers per game install - plans modified and CEO fired, lol

[thesecret1]

Codex contrarians contrarianing SO HARD that they side with a company radically altering its terms to start charging extra for existing clients and their past work. I am sure many a lib will be triggered xD by you sucking that particular boot, brave soldier.

Where? The entire thread is shitting on Unity.

 

[gabel]

Twitter is a private company and it can do whatever it wants. Er, Unity.

Exactly.
And there were so many more, better engines to use a decade or so ago.
The Unity retards deserve what they get.

It's just that the thing with X concerns another demographic.
Hail Hit.... erm Elon!

 

[Curious_Tongue]

And there were so many more, better engines to use a decade or so ago.

Decades old free engines that allow you to create professionally polished games on modern systems? With a team updating and maintaining the engine? With limitless free tutorials and troubleshooting resources? With a vibrant asset store? With an active community that helps with tricky issues you come across?

Tell me more.

 

[gabel]

Easier to use engines which produced better games. Who needs dynamic time of day and retarded shaders? But even then there was CryEngine for example, a million times better than Unity.

 

[gabel]

kys Lord_Potato, clueless idiot.

 

[Jaesun]

Well they effectively burned the customer trust bridge to the ground, good luck with that Unity.

 

[Modron]

Customers will forget in 2 months time if they don't go through with it, the more pressing issue is they've spooked developers and publishers.

 

[deuxhero]

This is funny.

 

[TheDarkUrge]

Why should shitty mobile games with millions of installs based on gacha gambling not have to pay their fair share to Unity? Unity has a -60% profit margin while those games BASED ON UNITY suck money out of the economy for retarded anime girl cards. The policy doesn't really even affect tiny games, it only matters for the massive ones and even then it's a rounding error to those games' profits. Of which Unity has none.

If I owned unity and saw people raking in cash via my engine while I was nearly bankrupt I would definitely do the same thing here. Anyone who wouldn't is a dumbass

 

[Azdul]

Easier to use engines which produced better games. Who needs dynamic time of day and retarded shaders? But even then there was CryEngine for example, a million times better than Unity.

I'm not sure how CryEngine fares under Amazon - but under CryTek - it followed id Software model of engine licensing: Here is a dump of source repository. As for documentation - there is none. You can ask lead engineer questions during one hour each month.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Why should shitty mobile games with millions of installs based on gacha gambling not have to pay their fair share to Unity? Unity has a -60% profit margin while those games BASED ON UNITY suck money out of the economy for retarded anime girl cards. The policy doesn't really even affect tiny games, it only matters for the massive ones and even then it's a rounding error to those games' profits. Of which Unity has none.

If I owned unity and saw people raking in cash via my engine while I was nearly bankrupt I would definitely do the same thing here. Anyone who wouldn't is a dumbass

Username checks out

 

[flyingjohn]

But even then there was CryEngine

Which is only useful for 3d and Fps types of games. So making it practically useless for anything else. Thus making it worse then Unity as a general game engine.

 

[scytheavatar]

Why should shitty mobile games with millions of installs based on gacha gambling not have to pay their fair share to Unity? Unity has a -60% profit margin while those games BASED ON UNITY suck money out of the economy for retarded anime girl cards. The policy doesn't really even affect tiny games, it only matters for the massive ones and even then it's a rounding error to those games' profits. Of which Unity has none.

If I owned unity and saw people raking in cash via my engine while I was nearly bankrupt I would definitely do the same thing here. Anyone who wouldn't is a dumbass

It's not money that is an issue, cause like you mentioned the big mobile boys have money to give to Unity. It's the manner the change is announced which is disturbing and suggests Unity is in 4th stage cancer. Unity:

1) First claims they will be charging per install no matter how many times you install on the same machine, then backtracked

2) Relies on "trust me bro" and secret sauce technology to count the number of installs, when it would be impossible to count installs on PC accurately without intrusive spyware

3) Claims they have rights to claim your installs retroactively, which of course is not how contracts work

4) Claims charity bundle will be exempted from counting, as if there is a way to differentiate charity bundle from normal installs

5) Gives devs only 4 month notice of the change, which is another ground for lawsuits cause it is impossible to port to another engine in that timespan

6) Silently removed their Github repo to track license changes, then updated their license to remove the clause that lets you use the TOS from the version you shipped with. Hiding TOS changes has already been ruled by courts to be illegal.

7) When asked about what they will do about Gamepass and their like, said they will talk to Microsoft about it. Good luck fucking around with their lawyers which just humiliated FTC.

8) Backtracks and said they will limit the fees to percentage of revenue and rely on self reporting from devs. Which makes you wonder why the fuck they don't just drop the install nonsense and rely on royalties like Unreal

All these are not the action of some greedy asshole company. They are the action of a company that is desperate to do anything to avoid death. You should assume such a company is going to die anyway.

 

[TheDarkUrge]

Why should shitty mobile games with millions of installs based on gacha gambling not have to pay their fair share to Unity? Unity has a -60% profit margin while those games BASED ON UNITY suck money out of the economy for retarded anime girl cards. The policy doesn't really even affect tiny games, it only matters for the massive ones and even then it's a rounding error to those games' profits. Of which Unity has none.

If I owned unity and saw people raking in cash via my engine while I was nearly bankrupt I would definitely do the same thing here. Anyone who wouldn't is a dumbass

It's not money that is an issue, cause like you mentioned the big mobile boys have money to give to Unity. It's the manner the change is announced which is disturbing and suggests Unity is in 4th stage cancer. Unity:

1) First claims they will be charging per install no matter how many times you install on the same machine, then backtracked

2) Relies on "trust me bro" and secret sauce technology to count the number of installs, when it would be impossible to count installs on PC accurately without intrusive spyware

3) Claims they have rights to claim your installs retroactively, which of course is not how contracts work

4) Claims charity bundle will be exempted from counting, as if there is a way to differentiate charity bundle from normal installs

5) Gives devs only 4 month notice of the change, which is another ground for lawsuits cause it is impossible to port to another engine in that timespan

6) Silently removed their Github repo to track license changes, then updated their license to remove the clause that lets you use the TOS from the version you shipped with. Hiding TOS changes has already been ruled by courts to be illegal.

7) When asked about what they will do about Gamepass and their like, said they will talk to Microsoft about it. Good luck fucking around with their lawyers which just humiliated FTC.

8) Backtracks and said they will limit the fees to percentage of revenue and rely on self reporting from devs. Which makes you wonder why the fuck they don't just drop the install nonsense and rely on royalties like Unreal

All these are not the action of some greedy asshole company. They are the action of a company that is desperate to do anything to avoid death. You should assume such a company is going to die anyway.

All these shows that

Well I have a feeling that Unity will walk back the stupid changes but still renegotiate in a different way for compensation to stay afloat. Classic routine. Then the CEO is going to fly out of the company in a golden parachute and Unity will pretend it was all his fault and they're good now.

In an unrelated note about your FTC and microsoft lawyer comment, the FTC chair has been doing frivolous suits against companies for political points not actually trying to win cases. She's "tried" against amazon and google as well. They basically just do it for headlines to pretend they're doing something. Supposedly it's still having an effect despite her losses, but who knows.

 

[Jaedar]

Customers will forget in 2 months time if they don't go through with it, the more pressing issue is they've spooked developers and publishers.

Yeah. Some devs might revert their decision to jump ship with their current games if there's sufficient retraction, but I expect that the trust is broken and everyone starting new long-term projects will be doing so in another engine. They've realized unity has them by the balls after they felt the first squeeze.

 

[Lord_Potato]

kys Lord_Potato, clueless idiot.

What are you on about, dummy?

 

[:Flash:]

Easier to use engines which produced better games. Who needs dynamic time of day and retarded shaders? But even then there was CryEngine for example, a million times better than Unity.

I'm not sure how CryEngine fares under Amazon - but under CryTek - it followed id Software model of engine licensing: Here is a dump of source repository. As for documentation - there is none. You can ask lead engineer questions during one hour each month.

That was the problem with most engines prior to Unity.
There was also the nebula device by Radon Labs. It was completely Open Source, licensed under MIT license. And still, no one used it, except Radon Labs for Project Nomads and the Drakensang games and some German shovelware studios.
I tried getting into it at one point, but it was here's the source code, good luck. ;-)

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Okay, who else had suspicions that it's just some botched marketing bullshit like this?

 

[Wilian]

will unity games disappear from steam
i know gog allows you to install whatever the fuck is on your account regardless of whether it's still listed in the store (like space rangers reboot which was replaced by HD)

That would be a massive lawsuit in making if Valve started yeeting bought games

 

[negator2vc]

Unity acquired how many companies in the last few years?
Unity hired how many people?
You can bet that those weren't developers with experience but quota fillers considering the state of Unity engine's new features & bugfixes.
And when no more money what they are trying to do?
Try to extort more money from their customers!
RIP Unity

 

[Caim]

Pretty sure Unity fired a lot of people in the last few years.

 

[Viata]

even tho this will not directly affect most of the Unity's userbase (mostly hobbists or really small devs that will never earn enough money to get hit by the new plans),

But it will. Who do you think Unity will ask for money as soon as triple A devs leave that ship?

 

[Viata]

Well they effectively burned the customer trust bridge to the ground, good luck with that Unity.

You forget their consumers are gamers, the most brainless kind of consumer out there. Unity doesn't need to fear lost of trust when it comes to their audience.

 

[negator2vc]

Well they effectively burned the customer trust bridge to the ground, good luck with that Unity.

You forget their consumers are gamers, the most brainless kind of consumer out there. Unity doesn't need to fear lost of trust when it comes to their audience.

Unity customers are the devs. Most gamers don't give a crap about the game engine their game is build with.
Try asking a gamers the name of Starfield or Hearthstone game engine
Hearthstone by the way is build with Unity

 

[negator2vc]

Pretty sure Unity fired a lot of people in the last few years.

Unity has still more than 7000 people.
Considering the state of the engine one can easily assume most aren't even devs or at least capable devs.